Simple Kind of Man
by RheidWrites
Summary: One is on a cross-country journey of self-doubt and self-discovery, the other has the journey brought to her. How do they help each other find what they didn't even know they were looking for? AH. Rated M for foul language, heavy/dark content, and lemons.


**AN: So this is my first story. Have mercy. Stick around. You'll probably enjoy.**

**Disclaimer: Characters are all that Stephenie Meyer chick's property. All the words are mine. Doubt I'll make a thousandth of what she did, though. **

**PROLOGUE**

E.C.

I hate this fucking town.

I hate the way it's always fucking raining. You'd think that the sun would make an appearance at least once a week, right? No. Apparently not. I hate the way everybody is always in your business because they're too damned bored of their own. How everybody knows your name, age, sex life, and just how you like your coffee. I hate how there isn't even a fucking Cold Stone or Chili's around. I thought they were everywhere. I appreciate a quaint little ice cream shop as much as the next guy, but just give me some desperate-for-spending-cash/weed high schoolers who will sing their dignity away for a dollar tip mixed in with some brownie bits and cookie dough, please. I hate how the water at the closest beach here is about a hundred fucking degrees below zero. The beach experience just isn't the same when you can't even remember what the sun even fucking looks like. No experience in Podunk ever feels fucking complete.

And yet, I'm still here.

I'm standing in the middle of a fucking _meadow_ for crying out loud. I am a grown man, standing in the middle of a fucking flowered-up, wussy ass meadow, bitching about a town like some scorned lover. I thought I had completely cracked three months ago, but apparently, _this_ is was cracking feels like. Unlike last time, I don't have any half-filled, orange prescription bottles to tell me that it would be a-okay. I have a motherfucking meadow. And because God or Fate or Destiny or Morgan Fucking Freeman is up there having good ol' time laughing at me, it starts to rain. Thank Morgan Freeman for that. I mean, it hasn't rained in a good forty-eight hours. I was beginning to think we'd hit a drought.

I couldn't tell you how long I stood there, just that it was long enough so that my clothes were completely soaked through, and the hidden sun must have set, because the grey afternoon had shifted into the dark of night. I didn't care. I didn't even remember driving out today. I can't give you an exact date as to when I turned into such an emo bitch, but it has most definitely happened in the course of the month that I've been here. I was perfectly happy being the pretentious, well-off, and probably ignorant asshole I was before I got here. Before her.

That's a lie. I wasn't happy. I was empty. I had no drive, no motivation, no muse, no anything. I just had a plan, and that didn't even end up working out.

I was knocked out of my musings when I heard the footsteps behind me. They were slow, deliberate, and I could hear each one sinking deeper into the flooded mud as they approached. My breathing picked up, as I had a feeling I knew exactly who it was. I didn't feel that electrical current to let me know she was coming to me, but I just knew it had to be her. Scratch that, I didn't know, but I sure as fuck hoped. I just stood there as the footsteps came to a halt behind me, because it all felt off. The buzz wasn't there. That calming feeling that was more powerful than any drug they ever prescribed me wasn't radiating off of her, crashing into me like wave after wave like it usually would. It was just all wrong.

This isn't how it was supposed to happen. Even in the most depressing movies, when the broken man stands alone in the rain, his salvation is always the one to come up behind him and comfort him. Tell him that everything was going to work out. That the unforgivable could be forgiven. She was supposed to be that salvation, damnit! Doesn't she understand how this was supposed to work? She was supposed to have that late night epiphany, jump into her car, and speed off the place where only she would know I'd be. She was supposed to realize that none of it fucking mattered, and that what did was the fact that we'd both try from here on out. She was supposed to realize it just as I did, standing there, waiting for her. This wasn't how it was supposed to end.

A large, firm hand found itself on my shoulder in what I assume was supposed to be a comforting gesture. I pushed it off, deciding to wait a little longer. I just didn't give her enough time yet.

"Come on man, you have to come back. Your sister's worried sick, and I think she even said something about your parents flying out here," he told me, as if it would make an ounce of a difference.

"She's going to come," I stated.

"Alice? No, she--"

"Not Alice, you fuckwit. You know who."

"Bella's not coming, Edward. And you know that. Stop tr--"

"Shut up, Black. You know shit about what happened, so don't go spouting out all this crap like you do."

"I know enough," Jake fumed, "I know enough to know that you messed up, and that she's not going to march her sane ass out here in the middle of a fucking storm to soothe your Goddamn ego. So straighten the fuck up, turn around, and let's get out of here before I have to club you over the head and do it forcefully. I'm about to miss my show, and I'm going to be really fucking pissed if you're the cause of that."

He gave me a slap upside the head, and I tried to let what he said sink in as he turned around and stormed off. She wasn't coming. I fucked up, and people don't just magically forgive you. I ran a hand through my sopping hair, the first movement I've made in who fucking knows how long, and looked around the meadow, as if hoping for a last chance at spotting her. He was right, she wasn't coming. I turned around and made my way back to the car, to drive back to that fucking town that derailed my whole life in the matter of just one month.

I fucking hated that town. I hate that I now had friends more genuine than all of my old ones slammed together. I hate that I had simultaneously found and lost the best damned thing that could have ever happened to me. I hated the fact I felt more at home living in a house with a giant Native American boy and his crippled father than I ever did in my own house. I even hated the fact that my sister had followed me out here, only to find even more permanent roots than the ones I started to plant.

Most of all, I hated that fucking town, because all I wanted to do was get back to it.


End file.
